This shouldn’t need pointing out, but all the ruling means is that the charges could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt; it does not show that they were untrue, or the News Corp is ethically challenged.

Former Downing Street adviser Andy Coulson has been found guilty of phone hacking …

That’s kind of a wierd way of describing him in this context since the charges he was found guilty of occurred when he was the editor of News of the World, a Murdoch paper.

So the newspapers were cleared. The government was found and caught out, after trying to gag free speech.

Where were the newspapers cleared? They’ve admitted that they phone-hacked and even publicly aplogised to the victims. These trials were about whether upper management knew about what as going on. At least one has now established to have known. How much further up above Coulson does it go though?

So the only one who was found guilty also worked for the PM’s office. Everyone else was cleared.

He worked for PM’s office after working as editor of News of the World. The charges he has been convicted of occurred when he was an employee of Murdochs company, not when he was working for the PM’s office and before the phone hacking offences were public knowledge. So I don’t see how his links to being employed by the PM’s office are more significant that his links as an editor of one of Murdoch’s papers.

And not everyone else has been cleared. There have been other Murdoch company employees already convicted over phone hacking charges – some of them testified at the recent trials. These have just been the most high profile – so far.